the graveyard near the house
by LinaRiceball
Summary: The other day when we were walking by the graveyard near the house, you asked me if I thought we would ever die.


**A/N: I am pleased to announce the publishing of my very first story based off a song, or what you readers and authors out there commonly refer to as "songfics". Thanks to a friend of mine, it was brought to my attention that 'The Graveyard Near The House' by The Airborne Toxic Event could be applied to the companionship between Rin and Hisao, and a story behind that relation could be created. If you have not heard the song, please give it a listen, if you're able. I'm not sure I can post any links to another website from here, but you can look up the song on YouTube or any music sharing site, or simply look up the lyrics if you're not inclined to listen. Or if you happen to share a similar trait of a certain someone named Shizune Hakamichi...**

 **(I'm sorry. I mean no offense to the hearing impaired. Just wanted to make a lighthearted joke.)**

 **In any case, I sincerely hope you enjoy this piece. Over the last couple of months I have been bringing it into fruition, and yesterday I had finally gotten the luxury of putting it all together. A very special thanks to Eric Alost, who helped me infinitely with not only bringing the idea into existence but also offering assistance in its development. After working away at it for so long, I decided it was finally time to release it to the public.**

 **If you can, please do tell me your thoughts or feelings on the story. It took a while to complete, and I think it was well worth it. Any comments or critiques would go a long way, no matter how short, long or astutely critical they may be.**

 **Thanks a billion. You're the most.**

 **With love,**  
 **-LR**

 **. . . . .**

I woke up reluctantly to the sound of my alarm blaring in my ears. I reached out a hand to hatefully shut it off with a grunt. But instead of swiftly smashing my palm against the magical button that would end it all, my arm decided to give up halfway and fell limply back to my side, now hanging lifelessly over the edge of my mattress.

I felt dead.

Dead to the world.

Heh.

I subconsciously let my mind wander to a certain red-haired girl who had so spontaneously waltzed into my train of thought, much like the way she usually does on a regular basis in the waking world.

"I wonder if Rin feels this way in the morning sometimes."

I say it out loud, not hearing or even noticing myself do so until I realize that my mouth just moved and that sentence did indeed come out of it.

Ugh.

I need to wake up.

[ whap! ]

I slap my cheeks.

More than once, to make sure the feeling is registering with me. I need to come out of this half-dead state of being.

I slowly coax myself out of bed, groaning as I rise from the covers and place my feet on the ground. Once in a sitting position, I simply stare at the wall for a good few minutes before slipping back into reality upon the realization that I am doing nothing but spacing out and staring at a beige wall, and I slap myself a few more times to make sure I'm actually awake before hauling myself up from the bed, truly wishing that reality didn't have to be so grueling today.

I make my way to the showers and wash, the hot water slowly pulling me back into a full state of awareness. I turn the water off and carefully peek out the door, checking to make sure a certain bespectacled someone isn't lurking in the bathroom somewhere, planning to jump me the moment I step out.  
After a quick but thorough search, I decide that the coast is clear and quickly slip into my clothes before the possibility of him getting a chance to actually jump out and attack me becomes plausible.

I head down the hall to my first class, only to come to the eventual realization that I have no idea what my first class is. I stop dead in my tracks and look at my watch.  
8:06... on a Saturday.

I was not liking any part of this day so far.

My plans having impetuously been pulled to a screeching halt, I wandered aimlessly around the halls, peering into the empty classrooms and abandoned desks. I bet I'm the only one who's up right now.  
Everything seemed so quiet. Almost eerily quiet. I wasn't used to total silence this early in the morning. The halls would normally be bustling with students, moving back and forth to try and navigate themselves to their first class on time. The bell would ring in about four minutes from now. I wonder if the bells still rang on Saturdays.

I ventured forth into this strange new world of silence, gazing in wonderment at how big the school looked with nobody in it. I start seeing things I'd never noticed before; small things I'd have never thought to look at had it not been for this strange, quiet day. A marking on the wall by Mutou's classroom that looked vaguely in the shape of a microscope; the clock by the door that was three minutes fast; the one discolored tile between the door stopper and the east wall. As I noticed these small, miniscule details, I slowly came to the realization that this was how I was currently spending my time. Sure, I normally wouldn't even be up right now if I'd remembered to shut my alarm off last night, but was this really how I wanted to spend my Saturday morning?  
I thought long and hard about it.  
As I was thinking, I stumbled across the art room door. My subconscious mind persuaded me to look in.  
I placed my hand on the doorknob and turned it as slowly as my wrist would allow. It was unlocked.  
I pushed it, ever so cautiously, being wary of any creaks I might create with the slightest ounce more of force.  
I made a reasonably sized space between the door and the wall and poked my head inside what I assumed was an empty room.  
Or so I thought.  
Before calling out jokingly to the barren classroom, something caught my eye.

A familiar something.

Something that didn't belong.

I rubbed my eyes to make sure I was seeing things correctly. It was unmistakable. I could hardly wrap my head around what was happening right now.  
"Rin!?" I blurted out, caught completely off guard.  
She had her head on top of a desk, her eyes peacefully closed, her mess of hair shadowing half her face. She hardly flinched at my outburst.  
I scuttled over to the desk she was napping on, completely unsure of what to make of all this. The weirdest mix of concern, fear and genuine confusion wrapped itself around my stomach and made me feel almost queasy. Out of all the crazy and outrageous things I thought might happen today, this was not one of them.  
I tried very hard to decide whether or not the best course of action would be to wake her or leave her be. I most certainly couldn't just leave her alone; that was clear to me now. I bet Rin would be the kind of person who'd forget her own head if it wasn't screwed tightly to her shoulders. I had seen Rin doing many odd things under many exceptionally odd circumstances, but this one takes the cake. In all my years, I never would've expected to find a girl, even one as colorfully unique as this one, sleeping in an empty classroom this early in the morning on a Saturday. Had she really been here all night? How did the teachers not find her? I felt I'd need to have a strong word with some of the staff here, but that was the least of my issues. What was Rin doing here sleeping on a desk in the art room? Why? And more importantly, how? She must be a really heavy sleeper to have slept through the sounds of moving tables, claxon bells, janitors and the indefinite discomfort of having her head pressed firmly against a slab of wood. I stared at her in disbelief. I was looking forward to her explanation of this unlikely situation.

To my relief, she stirred, her eyes twitching ever so slightly upon the annoyance of being awake and having to deal with that now. She opened one languid eye, which was incidentally gazing right at me in this odd position.  
There was a moment of silence, and then she muttered very sleepily, "is it Monday already?"  
Normally I'd have to crack a smile at that, but she was seriously pushing every single one of my buttons here. Did she even realize her own situation?  
"It's Saturday," I stated matter-of-factly, "and you were sleeping in the art room."  
She opened the other eye just as languidly as the first and peered about her surroundings, shifting her head only to the point of probably a 5-degree angle. She simply turned her gaze back to me.  
"Yes," she plainly stated, acknowledging this rather casually. I thought I might explode, but seeing Rin's sleepy face amidst all this confusion was too much for my logic-fueled brain to handle. I could feel my cares and concerns melting away as we sat in the art room, both equally as dazed and confused as the other and entirely helpless to bring ourselves to any sort of middle ground.  
I smiled hopelessly at her and dragged up a chair.  
"How was your sleep?" I asked.  
She closed her eyes in thought, but she did it so convincingly that I was worried for a minute she was going to fall asleep again.  
Thankfully, she opened her eyes once more and spoke.  
"It was okay. Neck feels weird. Like it's made out of straws. Those bendy ones that make a funny noise when you bend them the wrong way."  
"That's because of the weird position," I said. "You slept on a bad angle."  
She was silent for a moment.  
"... That would explain it," she replied slowly, the words dribbling out of her mouth in a slurred jumble.  
I chuckled a little.  
"Come on," I said. "We're way too tired to function like this. Let's go for a walk and get some fresh air."  
I proposed this in a rather sudden manner, also casually, as though it meant just as much as apparently falling asleep in a classroom that could've easily been locked from the outside and trapping anyone still in it for an undetermined amount of time did to Rin. I was still baffled that she hardly seemed fazed at all by the implications of what could've happened had anything gone any differently than it did, but at least I could rest easy knowing that she was safe and sound (somehow), and I was now here to ensure that nothing else would happen in that regard.  
She closed her eyes as if to nod, but her head didn't budge.  
"It feels like there are a hundred mammoths in my head."  
I rolled my eyes. I'd somehow gotten used to her weird metaphors over this past month. It was almost like she has a language of her own half the time. And now I was slowly learning how to understand it; even speak it, to some extent. Though that was to be determined for another day.  
I gave her a few pats on the back.  
"Here. I'll help you up."  
I got up and hooked her arm stump under the bend in my arm. She was light as a feather, though there did seem to be some resistance, as to be expected from her, having just woken up and all.  
Which reminds me...  
"Hey, Rin, how did you end up falling asleep in the art room, anyway?"  
She took a minute to think about it.  
"I don't remember. Teacher asked me to stay, so I took a nap. But I don't know how the rest happened. I think I was going to work on a project but it was making me sleepy."  
Well, this is Rin we are talking about. Her word is as good as any.

We wandered down the empty halls, the only sound persisting through the silence being the tip-tapping of our shoes against the floor. Rin was so tired she could hardly stand, let alone walk. I had to hold onto her shirt collar to keep her upright.  
As we approached the door to the outside world, Rin said something that was almost completely out of left field, even by her standards.  
"It smells like dust, and moonlight."  
And those words slowly dissipated into the air, vanishing moments after they were born. Nothing else between that doorway was said that day.

We walked out into the blistering sunlight, squinting our eyes in dazzlement. It felt as though we were two frats stumbling into the bright outside world, trying to recover from hangovers received the night prior. All we needed was two pairs of shades and it would look fairly convincing.

We walked past the gates, down the road and into familiar territory. There were several residencies around the area.  
I figured we could make a pit stop at the Shanghai for some tea or possibly some coffee, but Rin seemed distracted. She was staring off into space, her head tilted away from my line of view and beyond the concrete road.  
I tried looking where she was looking, but all I saw were a few large oaks and grassy terrain. I was half-tempted to wave a hand in front of her face, like in television cartoons when characters tried to snap glassy-eyed vectors back into reality.  
I cleared my throat.  
"What do you see, Rin?" I asked, feeling pretty much obligated to at this point.  
"There is a path I didn't see before," she said without turning her head.  
I craned my neck as far as it would go, straining to see this path she was talking about. For all I knew, it could've been a figment of her imagination; an illusion created by extreme sleepiness. I started weighing out the pros and cons, trying to come to a reasonable conclusion for the particular circumstances we were under.  
I got so caught up with it, in fact, that I hardly noticed that we had stopped walking.  
So immersed in my own thoughts that I didn't realize that my hand was no longer holding onto Rin's collar, and the artist in question was now slowly veering off the road towards the location she had been fixated on for the past five minutes.

It took me about forty-five seconds to clue in.

"Ah!"  
I startled myself upon turning around and realizing that Rin was not there. I frantically twisted my head around until I saw her wandering off into the distance, moving further and further away from the road.  
I chased after her as quickly as possible without setting my heart off, which was a challenge in and of itself. As soon as I caught up to her, I had to beg her to stop so that I could even out my breathing.  
A short exchange of words and mindless confirmation brought us to the situation we were in now, in which Rin was undeterred and I was unable to present a reasonable argument in my state of being.  
Now that I was being forced to follow the will of this arbitrary girl, I was able to come to this verdict:  
it was 8:30 in the morning, we both just woke up, and neither of us had anything better to do. We might as well go on this unusual adventure through Rin's possibly untrodden territory.  
I placed a hand on her shoulder.  
"Rin... wait."  
She turned around and looked in the general direction of a small freckle on my chin.  
"Let me catch my breath first."

I followed Rin to a forested area past the street, where, lo and behold, a small dirt path between the grass twined through the budding canopy.  
"Well I'll be damned. There really is a path."  
Rin had nothing to say to this.  
Armed with a sense of adventure and the slightest pretense of caution, we ventured down the path to a grassier area, coming across a few more trees in its wake. It led down to a field that seemed bereft of any life, but still seemed... lively.  
A small, dark-colored house could be seen in the distance on a hilltop. It had a window with an off-white panel, and a sign in the front that I couldn't quite make out. It looked like the kind of sign that people put up when they wanted to advertise something. Perhaps the house was for sale.  
It looked like an old, time-worn house. It could've been quite a few years old by the looks of it, but it had an oddly calming air about it. It was just standing on its own, a fair distance away from civilization, but not so much to the point of total isolation. I quietly wondered who the previous owners were.  
We strayed off the path a little to get a closer look, Rin taking a bit of a shine to this new landmark. I decided we'd use it to find our way back, if we ended up going further than we initially intended.  
As we neared the area, something else caught my eye.  
Just behind the hill was a gated clearing, and within it little stone objects poking out of the ground in a rather solemn fashion.  
It soon became clear to me what it was.  
"Rin, look," I said, grabbing her shoulder and pointing past the field.  
"It's a graveyard."  
She gazed past my finger and into the wild blue yonder, fixating herself on the little groups of headstones past the house.  
"Want to walk through it?" I asked.  
She craned her head to get a different perspective, then turned back to me.  
"Okay."

We started heading towards the rustic-looking gates, painted black and pointing out in several directions. Upon closer inspection, I could see that they were starting to rust.  
There was an open area with no blockades for us to walk in through.  
We entered the clearing, each grave giving off a very different energy than the other. Places like this always bothered me a little bit. Graveyards were the resting places of bodies that once moved and talked and thrived as human beings that now laid lifelessly below the surface, left to rot and decay. They were places of mourning and sorrow; holding cells for the dead. It was easy to feel out of place in such a sad and spiritual dwelling.  
We wandered aimlessly about through this arcane valley of the dead. With Rin there, however, I felt I could take a step back from my swarming thoughts and worries and simply let myself be in this moment.  
"Hisao?"  
"Yes, Rin?"  
"Do you think we'll ever die?"  
Her question made me stop and think.  
It wasn't necessarily unusual to have that sort of thought surface in the presence of once-living bones underground, but hearing those words come out of her mouth made me feel just a little uneasy.  
"Everyone dies at some point. Death is a part of life, after all."  
She closed her eyes and considered this.  
"What is life, Hisao?"  
I looked at her.  
Rin.  
This strange girl who I had come to admire so much in my existence.  
An existence that now, incidentally, we were sharing together.  
Such an existence, I felt, deserved proper acknowledgement.  
We deserved to know what our life meant.  
"... Rin."  
Her head was still turned, studying me with those expectant eyes of hers.  
For all I know, that could've been my answer.  
"It is very hard to know exactly what life can be or will be, in any myriad of circumstances pertaining to which we'd associate with it," I said, uncertain.  
Life, as in our presence in the herenow. How does one determine that one is, in fact, living? Who's to say that we are not all our own consciousness, but an illusion that we had created as an entity?  
"... I don't know if we'll ever understand. All I know is that if we spend our whole life trying to figure out what life is, and why we live it... it will suddenly be over, and we'll have missed all of it."  
I can't be sure if any of that got through to her, but her deep green wells shine in the early morning sunlight, looking at me or through me, not about to share the secrets that lie beneath them. For all I know, Rin's head could've been in a completely different place.  
But she nods, either in acceptance or understanding, while I'm left to wonder which one it is.  
I decide to cast it to the wind, realizing that it probably didn't really matter in the long run.

"Are all of these people lying underground?" Rin asked, looking out at a long row of plots.  
"That is normally what defines a grave," I replied.  
Silence ensued.  
"I wonder what it would be like to sleep underground," said Rin. "It must be very cold down there."  
I suddenly pictured me and Rin in a plot under one of the headstones, covered in dirt and rubble, wearing old, tattered clothes. We looked pretty silly as a pair of corpses in the ground. But we probably looked just as silly here above the surface, didn't we?  
I looked at Rin, shuffling around the graveyard as though it was just any other place, her mouth moving as though she were talking to all of the spirits beneath the earth, asking them how the afterlife is. I knew she couldn't stay this innocent forever. It would have to fade away at some point in her feeble existence, along with that childlike curiosity, and her livelihood. Mine would fade too, someday, along with hers. We'd both eventually fade into nothing, leaving this life one way or another. The thought was almost too much to bear.  
"Rin..." I started, but she had something else on her mind.  
"Hisao, come look."  
She was motioning at a headstone, about two plots away from me.  
"This person's name was April Maye June. That must've been confusing for the postal service."  
She had the strangest smile on her face. I couldn't begin to tell her how awful I felt right now. It was all in my head, none of it daring to breach the divide between my own thoughts and the outside world. But Rin, in all her silliness, was a constant in my life. As long as she kept smiling, I was at ease.  
"Heh..."  
It was an awkward laugh, sounding just a little forced. She didn't seem to notice, though.  
"I don't think I've ever seen someone named three whole months in a row."  
Rin nodded.  
"Me neither. Her parents must've really liked those three months."  
It was so hard not to feel happy around Rin. Despite what I was thinking before, I really hoped that her dog-eared innocence would last for a very, very long time.  
"Hisao?"  
I looked back her way.  
"Yes?"  
She got that curious look in her eye again.  
"Do you think this place will be our future?"  
My heart sank. Her question made me remember the most important reason I felt so terrible every time I visited a graveyard.  
"... I can't predict anything that might happen beyond the present."  
I looked right at her. She looked somewhere near my general direction.  
"I'm not going to pretend I can tell you what's going to happen next. We could become the world's first indestructable human beings, or create a day that everybody can visit a graveyard for reasons beyond whatever they typically are now. The future is... vague, at best. But we're here now, aren't we?"  
She thought about this.  
"... Yes. We are here now."  
I nodded.  
"Yeah."  
This is all that needs to exist right now. Just us, being here, living.  
She didn't say anything further, and neither did I. The conversation had disappeared forever, leaving quietly a lingering feeling in its wake. A feeling of acceptance, perhaps.  
Rin stared off into the distance, taking in the light from the sun on the horizon and the warmth in the air.  
"... You have no idea about me, do you?" I muttered under my breath.  
She turned back to me.  
"Did you hear something, Hisao?"  
I shook my head.  
We continued through the graveyard, passing more rows of strangers who we'd never meet.  
I was eager to leave.

We came out on the other end, walking away from the house. There didn't seem to be much ahead of us, at least in terms of objects of interest between the blank spaces, so we decided to turn back up and look at it one more time.  
I peered through the window. The house looked so empty and abandoned, but oddly inviting. I tried to imagine us living in that house, moving our things in together and spending time in this quiet place. It seemed so bizarre, and yet, so plausible. Maybe, ironically, we really would end up living in this house one day.

Another thought occurred to me as we left for the walk back to Yamaku.  
"I wonder if people ever really know each other," I said to the wind. "It seems more to me like we just stumble around like strangers in the dark."  
Rin seemed intrigued by this.  
"Why do you say that?" she asked.  
I looked at her looking at me, or in my general direction.  
"Because sometimes you just seem so strange to me, Rin."  
She tilted her head.  
"But... I must seem pretty strange to you, too."  
She considered this.  
"I guess you are kind of strange sometimes."  
"How so?"  
"I never understand how you like math and science so much. It's just a bunch of words and numbers that are jumbled together to tell you a bunch of things about the world in the most boring way possible."  
Ah. Classic Rin.  
"Science isn't actually that boring. The teacher just makes it sound that way sometimes."  
But my point was moot now, as she had already moved on to other things.  
"I think that graveyard was interesting. I might try to paint it when we get back to the school."  
Rin is inspired by the strangest things. Just the other day she was painting a piece she wanted to make after she saw a bird land on a tree branch. Last week she painted what looked like a world blurred by a wall of water when she saw droplets of rain on the window. A few months ago, she...

My mind suddenly went to a dark place as I recalled the events that transpired before Rin's art exhibition.  
She came into my room, made some spontaneous advances and revealed that she was using me for inspiration to paint.  
She had been pushing herself harder than she ever had before, and it was because I was the one who pressed her to do the exhibition, but it still didn't make me feel very good. I remember every part about that day. It was the worst I'd felt in years.  
"Hisao? Why do you look angry?"  
Rin's voice pulled me out of that dark memory, back into the city street and her eyes that looked just a little worried.  
"... I'm sorry. I..."  
I had to seriously consider telling her the truth or not.  
"... I was just remembering something upsetting."  
I met halfway, telling her why I had the expression on my face but not coming out with the whole reason.  
"What were you remembering?"  
Shit. Now I had to tell her, didn't I?

I didn't want to say it, but she left me no choice.  
"... I was remembering the night you came to my room, and how angry I got when you told me you needed me to paint."  
Rin's expression immediately shifted into one of deep sorrow and terror. It was more than I could bear.  
"Can't you forget, Hisao?"  
Her eyes were begging, pleading. She wanted so badly for this one thing to go away.  
I can't say I blamed her. I did, too. Possibly even more than she did.  
"... I'm sorry, Rin. I can't forget the past."  
She grew quiet, seeming now like a lost and lonely child, hoping so badly that this moment would not last.  
I felt so bad for her. I wanted to hug her and tell her that everything was okay. I wanted to somehow become magical just for one minute, just long enough to cast one spell of amnesia, and erase both our memories of the horrible event.  
"I'm sorry..." she whispered, her voice coming out in a coarse rasp. I just about nearly cried.  
"Don't."  
I placed a hand on either cheek, tenderly holding her face in my palms. I wanted her to stop talking. I wanted her to stop thinking.  
"Don't say you're sorry. Don't say a word."  
It felt so out of place for her to apologize. While back then, after we'd more or less recovered from that horrendous night, I may have accepted her apology in recompense for her misconduct of me and her words and actions that upset me so easily, having her here, now, looking at me with those eyes that begged forgiveness, filled me with discomfort. She was not to blame, no more than I was. Had I not pushed her to do something she may or may not have done on her own volition without my help; had I not pressed her when I knew she was on the edge of destruction; had I not let my emotions get the better of me and become angry just from her being herself, none of it might have ever happened.  
I couldn't take it anymore. I pulled her into a tight, warm hug, stroking her hair gently.  
"Everything will be okay," I mumbled into her shirt. For all I knew those words meant nothing, but I hoped that at least the intent behind them was enough to reach her.  
"Everything will be okay..."  
A warm wetness seeped through the fabric of my shirt, indicating the tears that were most likely welling up in her eyes as the memory of that night in my room flashed before her. I felt so terrible, and so hopeless. It occurred to me now that maybe this was the beginning of my passing fear in the graveyard, when my mind began to wander to thoughts of the future and an innocence that inevitably would not remain within us, and would not remain within her. The sadness carried itself up to my throat and then my chest, rising and falling as it pleased and leaving me at the mercy of its whims. My eyes welled up and I, too, began to cry, letting the tears fall freely from my face and onto my already damp shirt.  
I moved my hand up and down Rin's back in a consoling motion, hoping to offer her some comfort in this dismal moment. Neither of us could say we were well-prepared to encounter these upsetting whispers of the past. I could only hope that, somehow, it will seem only like a distant call someday, from somewhere far, far away, in the depths of an endless abyss that would only fade as time passed by. I longed for that day, when this ordeal would be nothing more than a sparrow's cry in the open air.

We staggered back into a steady walk towards the school gates. I tried to match the uneven yet so very delicate and purposeful pacing of Rin's feet as they stepped one in front of the other, but trying to walk alongside her with her motions changing at her every whim was a fool's errand. For all I knew, her movements were a direct reflection of her each and every thought, which could be anything from the feeling of moss between her toes to the endless mysteries of outer space. All I needed was to be there, walking with her, beside, in front or behind my red-haired companion. As long as we were walking, away from that memory, away from the moment forever, we were all right.

We had finally made it back to the school. It felt so good to be back in familiar territory. Straying off somewhere strange and unknown was an adventure, but after that emotional roller coaster of a morning, I felt exhausted. I was glad to see the dormitories again, where my room with its beige walls and ugly curtains patiently awaited my return.

As we walked back through the wrought iron gates, I spotted Rin's iconic mural sitting by the concrete stairs. I felt another force slowly pull me towards it, as though I was only in control of half my body.  
Rin must be rubbing off on me. Normally she's the one who wanders off, not the other way around.  
I stopped mere feet away from the piece, so mind-bogglingly huge and full of colors and figures that it makes it hard to believe one girl painted it all with her right foot.  
I gazed at it, entranced. Memories of the festival filled me to the brim with raw nostalgia as my eyes wandered over each and every creature Rin had created, bringing them into existence.  
Not knowing that Rin had followed me here, I jumped when she spoke.  
"What are you doing, Hisao?"  
"Gah!"  
My head swivelled around to where the familiar voice had come from. She was standing right beside me, looking up at me behind her short, messy bangs.  
"... I was reliving the memories of the day we watched the fireworks together," I said without a hitch. There was no reason to lie about anything this time.  
Rin began to smile again. It made me feel so happy every time she smiled.  
"We spent all day sitting by this brick wall and I fell asleep on your shoulder."  
So she remembered it. I couldn't resist making one last jab at her.  
"My arm fell asleep and I had to keep it in a weird position to wake it up."  
She kept smiling still.  
"You said I was heavy."  
"I lied."  
Her eyes grew wide.  
"I knew it!"  
We both shared a good laugh as the sun cast shadows under the trees.  
"We are so different. I write words, and you paint pictures."  
"Maybe it's like two halves of a whole?"  
I raised an eyebrow.  
"If you write the words and I paint the pictures, we would make a book together."  
"A picture book."  
She looked at me in a confused manner.  
"What kind of a book doesn't have pictures?"  
I had to keep myself from laughing again.  
"Light novels, thesauruses, Japanese-English dictionaries..."  
I could gladly go on, but I felt I had proved my point.  
Rin seemed skeptical.  
"There are novels that have pictures. There was one I saw that had a map on the first page."  
"You read one of those?"  
"I read the first five pages, but then some guy told me it was his book and he took it away. He was very rude."  
I started to wonder if this guy she was talking about was Kenji, but I decided not to ask.  
"Why were you reading someone else's book?"  
"I didn't know it was someone else's. It was just sitting on one of the low shelves in the library and I started reading it. If it was his, he should've had it with him."  
She closed her eyes.  
"So rude."  
We spent the rest of the day talking about rain and trees and books that didn't have pictures in them. We reminisced for a while, even though still only a few months had passed since most of the things we had been through together. It felt like so much to happen in such a short amount of time.

Before we knew it, the sun was going down and the sky grew dark. We had once again spent the entire day sitting by Rin's mural.  
I felt a chill down my spine. Without the sun's warmth, the air was getting colder. Rin twitched her nose a little, looking uncomfortable as well.  
"Do you want to go inside now?"  
She nodded.

We walked back up the stairs through the doorway and veered left to the girls' dormitories. I decided I'd walk Rin back to her room, as per usual since every other day we ran into each other like this.  
I opened Rin's door for her, following her inside. It had become general conduct now.  
"Are you hungry?" I asked, realizing that we hadn't eaten a bite since this morning.  
Rin's eyes grew wide as though I had just solved the Callan-Symanzik equation.  
"How did you know?" she asked.  
"We spent the whole day together, and neither of us had eaten anything since I found you sleeping in the art room."  
She shrugged this off, seeming almost disappointed in my extremely logical answer.  
I briefly thought back to the day she asked me if I was psychic and I gave her a similarly logical response, which resulted in her making the exact same face she was making now.  
I reeled myself back in to our reality and focused on the task at hand.  
Er... foot, rather.  
"So, what do you want to eat?" I asked.  
She shrugged at this as well, not really seeming to care much for what kind of food she was going to eat, as long as she was eating it. I suppose I was much the same way at this point.  
I made a run to the cafeteria, praying that it would still be open.  
Luckily, it was, and I randomly selected two things from the menu that sounded somewhat edible.  
I hauled the plates back to Rin's room and we ate savagely, shovelling the food into our mouths so quickly we didn't even stop to think about how it tasted. All we knew was that it was filling our empty stomachs.

After our extremely quick meal, Rin settled into her bed and I joined her, wrapping an arm around her shoulder. It felt so nice to spend some time with her, especially in these quiet moments where we could simply enjoy the presence of one another. We were like tethers; always tied to each other somehow, starting where the other left off.  
"Hisao?"  
I looked at her. She looked at me.  
"... I love you."  
She spoke as though the words were still unfamiliar to her, trying to test them out with her own voice. She had the oddest expression about her features; confusion and uncertainty at the unusual arrangement of words that had just come out of her mouth, and genuine belief in their message to me.  
I smiled.  
"I love you, too, Rin."  
She looked down for a moment. A light blush spread across her cheeks. It was indisputably adorable.  
Looking back up at me, she tried to arrange her face into something that would tell me what she wanted without having to physically say it.  
Giving up, she simply lowered her eyelids and leaned in towards me. I picked up on the signal right away and leaned in as well, planting a kiss on her heart-shaped lips. When she decided not to pull away, I kissed her even deeper, placing a hand behind her head and tangling my fingers in her wild, messy hair. We kissed passionately, savouring every loving moment.  
We slowly broke off, detaching ourselves from each other's lips before running out of breath. We gazed deeply into each other's eyes, having only one perfectly communicated thought on our mind. Neither of us needed to speak to tell each other in that moment that we were, without a doubt, completely and unconditionally in love.

We chatted idly about miscellaneous things in bed, making offhand remarks at events that wouldn't be commented on otherwise.  
I grinned and pulled a book out of my pocket.  
"Hey Rin, what's this...?"  
I smugly flipped through the pages of my light novel, making sure to keep each one of them open just long enough to notice only one particular detail.  
"I don't believe it. How can this thing call itself a book without a single picture?"  
Rin playfully nudged me in the arm with her body, making angry looks at me but smiling still. We shared a few giggles before succumbing to the unmistakable tiredness we were starting to feel. Rin yawned quietly, as if trying to hold herself back from doing so. This caused me to yawn too, and then Rin to yawn once more.  
"I'll get the light," I said, getting up to flip the light switch.  
Rin whimpered a little at my temporary departure, but no sooner did I turn the light off than did I swiftly return to bed, still being able to see Rin's smile in the darkness of the room.  
I pulled the covers over us and she snuggled into me, making my heart beat like a well-tempered drum. I gave her one last good-night kiss on the forehead, and closed my eyes, letting sleep take me.

I woke up the next morning to see Rin lying awake in bed, her eyes filled with tears.  
I was immediately distraught by this and quickly moved in to embrace her.  
"Rin? Are you okay? Did you have a bad dream?"  
She turned to her side to look at me, letting her tears spill over onto her cheek.  
"Hisao... will you stay?"  
I looked at her in confusion.  
"Of course I'll stay! I had no intention of leaving."  
But she shook her head.  
"Will you... stay behind... and keep living... if I get old...?"  
Her words saddened me beyond repair.  
What the hell kind of question was that!?  
"Rin... don't talk like that. Please."  
I was beginning to think that our little detour through the graveyard yesterday was a terrible idea.  
"Wherever the hell we're going, we're going together. I will not stay behind and let you age without me."  
I felt like I was truly beginning to understand Rin's language. Her thoughts and feelings were clearer to me now than ever.  
I started to cry.  
Tears streamed down my cheeks, blurring the image of Rin's grief-stricken face, with her head on a wet spot on her pillow where her own tears had been shed. My pillow was also becoming damp and uncomfortable, unable to keep my eyes from crying.  
Thoughts began to flash through my head; thoughts of my stay in the hospital, my heart attack, the constant medication to keep me from abruptly keeling over and dying. Thoughts of my first day at Yamaku, and meeting Rin in the empty art room one midsummer afternoon. Thoughts of my love for her, and how it had made me better as I struggled through this depressing time. Thoughts of all the various hoops we had jump through to get to where we are today, this sorry state we are in now.  
Why?  
Why did it have to be this way?  
What was it all leading up to?  
Yesterday, Rin had asked me about our future. Today, in this moment, all of the trials and tribulations of a future we would share together became cripplingly coherent. My fears began to manifest into one big ball of anxiety, building up the more I excogitated it.  
I closed my eyes and tried to breathe.  
When I opened them again, I was in Rin's room, in her bed, lying next to this crying girl I have come to love so much over the months we'd been here together.  
It was at that moment I realized how silly I was being.  
I shook my head and reached out my hand to wipe the tears from Rin's pretty green eyes.  
I didn't care about our future.  
Even if we did run into all those problems, I'd defy every one and love her still.  
I'd carry her with me up every hill.  
"Shhh," I said, stroking her wet little cheek.  
"Shhhh."  
Her sobbing quickly ceased.  
"Rin, if you die before I die, I'll carve your name out of the sky."  
I caressed her, gently wrapping my arms around her body and pulling her close to my heart.  
"I'll fall asleep with your memory, and dream of where you lie."  
I knew it could be better to move on and let life just carry on, but for all I knew, I could be wrong about that, too. There was never really any way of knowing, was there?  
Even still, I would try.  
"Rin... it's better to love, whether you win or lose or die."  
I pressed my lips against hers, salty taste and all.  
"And I will love you 'til I die."


End file.
